The show, which was organized by Norton photography curator Tim Wride, has sparked considerable media attention because the artist photographed many of the source images in 2015 and 2016 while flying with NASA scientists over Greenland, documenting how melting glaciers are affecting rising sea levels. He’s the first artist to be embedded with a NASA science mission.

Artist Justin Brice Guariglia looks over the presentation of his exhibition Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida on Sept. 5, 2017. The large, vertical image to his right is QAANAAQ1, which the Norton acquired. (Allen Eyestone / Daily News)

Artist Justin Brice Guariglia looks over the presentation of his exhibition Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene at the Norton Museum of ... read more

We probably should define the word “anthropocene.” It’s the present era in geologic time. We’ve entered a period in which human activity has become the dominant global influence on the climate and environment.

Consider the hulks of sea ice in the massive AKUNNAAAQ1 (10 feet, 8 inches tall) and JAKOBSHAVN 1 (16 feet tall). “It’s all freshly caved ice that’s just come off a glacier,” Guariglia said last month when he was at the Norton for the show’s debut.

The ice is long gone now, melted into the ocean. “This could be in West Palm Beach today,” the artist said. “It’s now water and dispersed through the world.”

They’re likely to endure for aeons because they’re printed with a process that turns the acrylic inks into durable polymers and mounted on fossil fuel-derived, non-perishable polystyrene or indestructible aluminum.

Fossil fuels, of course, are what most scientists blame for global warming. Plastics and aluminum are among the substances scientists have identified as markers of the anthropocene.

Images that started with aerial photos of terraced farms or surface mines in Asia have metamorphosed through a process that involves applying multiple layers of prints made with viscous, paint-like acrylic inks. In some, layers of gold leaf reference the minerals being extracted.

With images such as Arctic Ocean I, Justin Brice Guariglia captured aerial images of seasonal ice. Courtesy of the artist

With images such as Arctic Ocean I, Justin Brice Guariglia captured aerial images of seasonal ice. Courtesy of the artist

A group of black and white works resemble the night sky, but they’re actually aerial images of arctic sea ice, seasonal ice that forms in water.

The works are tactile and seductive and if you didn’t know what they were, you’d probably think they were abstract paintings. Guariglia calls their illusory, three-dimensional quality “the honey to bring people into these ideas.”

“It’s easy to take pictures of pollution,” he said. “That’s low-hanging fruit. I wanted to create something more timeless and related on a lot more levels.”

Guariglia, who spent 20 years as a photojournalist in Asia, said he’s trying to “redefine the language of photography … to make it multidimensional in the same way the ideas are.”

Wride, who first viewed Guariglia’s images 13 years ago, said the artist has hit his stride with this work. “To have these ideas of agent, result and implications all coalesce here in this work is irresistible to me,” he said.

Guariglia hopes his art will help change the perilous reality it represents. “At the end of the day, I’m a humanist,” he said. He’s slated to continue flying missions with NASA through 2020.

The Norton acquired QAANAAQ1. After the show closes Jan. 7, it will travel to the USC Fisher Museum of Art at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. A catalog will be available in December.

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